Collaborating on design strategy: What is a definition project? Sean riffing on our doc! 🤔💭

Hey, Christina. I had some time to riff on this a little bit, so I put the latest diagram in. Let me know if you want to make more changes.

I can also just point you to the Pigma file in case that's helpful. So I just expanded on this model you were doing with with bullets, because I think it's just a nice way, especially if someone's dipping into it, to just, like, get the point.

Sometimes I lean on writing stories and paragraphs. And while that's sometimes useful, I think this is a really great way to just almost rely on this as, like, a checklist.

So I started with why invest in vision work? What's the point? I don't know if we have to convince anyone of this, but it's maybe a good refresher.

I think it definitely encourages teams to solve problems in a more unbounded and compelling way. It builds team excitement and buy in related to long tales of work.

It grounds ideas in what we know through research. And I think that's a really important part of these definition projects.

And then it's just fun and it up levels everyone who's involved, I think. And then I also wrote down, like, okay, this is why to invest.

Where does it come from? I think great vision work starts with inspiration, whether it's compelling research, turning events like a drop in revenue, or a team is struggling.

Like with the Recorder Project, that felt like that team was kind of they were in a bad place. Metal Lab kind of left them in a bad place, and they were looking for kind of a fresh start.

And then also, I feel like Top of Mind got started through casual yet compelling team conversations. So conversations at any level, whether it's the leadership level or teams, or just amongst peers of any kind.

And then I expanded your section for ingredients, for success. This is definitely the media's one, and I think this is the one folks will reference the most.

So definitely agree on the Daisy model being super important. I changed. I'm curious what you think here. This originally said a defined home team.

I wrote, like, maybe it needs a pillar sponsor. And the reason I wrote this is I'm thinking about even the collaboration work, the invite work that I'm doing with the growth team and how they're happy to have help that is, from outside of the pillar.

And they're very much bought into the work. And then I contrast that with top of mind. It would have been so helpful if we would have had that initial buy in and sponsorship from the Create team, even if ultimately they needed some help from a lift standpoint, like, okay, Sean is going to jump in on this, maybe with Rajiv in a couple of weeks.

But Shawn is going to start at the beginning.org. Is going to start right away with a couple of other create designers.

But just a thought on like, maybe sponsor makes sense. And then executive sponsor. You already have that here. And then I already covered this but Driver and other contributors are defined upfront and I think this gets at your top down versus bottom up model.

Those folks may or may not be on the pillar sponsoring the effort. And then for the brief, I think we learned this even just like wrapping up top of mind, keep it succinct.

Lean on bullets lean on looms. Get to a point. Define success metrics, clear output design or experience principles? Upfront. Sorry.

I'm like reading the things that you've already written. And then also I added this one like inspirational storytelling that's informed by research.

I think that's also something that sometimes is neglected from these. And then for the concepts, I think informed by upfront brainstorming, they're bold and unbounded.

So we should really encourage folks who are participating in these exercises to not be tactical especially upfront. And then the work is prioritized based on customer and business impact and level of effort.

I feel like that was a really successful part of a couple of these vision projects. So really leaning on that cards exercise towards the end.

And then for check ins, I feel like occasional workshops when milestones are reached, but otherwise rely on loom to encourage people to have ah, space to go wide and deep versus small incremental kind of progress.

But yeah, that's what I have so far. I'm trying to think what else we've we may want to include here.

Yeah, let me know what you think.